Published by Douglas Messerli, the World Cinema Review features full-length reviews on film from the beginning of the industry to the present day, but the primary focus is on films of intelligence and cinematic quality, with an eye to exposing its readers to the best works in international film history.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Edgar G. Ullmer | Detour

Coincidence is the
heart of so many stories. Who’d have guessed the man who ticks off Oedipus in a
bad case of road rage happens to be his missing pop; and the cute dame he meets
and hooks up with after turns out to be his mom?Wouldn’t you know that Romeo would just have
to fall for the rival gang leader’s sis?

For poor Al Roberts (Tom Neal) it’s the
same thing all over again. Once he gets up the courage to quit tinkling his
ivories and split for California where his singing honey, Sue Harvey (Claudia
Drake), is getting awfully hungry, you just know he’d have the bad luck to try
to hitch a ride with a blabbermouth weirdo like Charles Haskell, Jr. (Edmund
McDonald)—scratches all over his fingers and a crooked scar running down his
flabby bicep—who’d conk out on him the moment he puts his heel to the brake.
Just open the door and the slob falls out head straight to asphalt. What’s he
gonna do? Police would never believe this one! Al has to steal the wheel, man’s
wallet, and I.D. too. Can’t leave anything ‘cept the stiff laying round. Better
get out of there fast!

Sure enough, stop for just a little
radiator water and he’s doomed. Picked up the wrong bimbo this time for sure!
Vera (Ann Savage) see says, and before he can even look over her statistics,
she all’s over him, knows Al from every angle, even ones in which he’s never
bent. See, she just happens to be the gal who gave those scratches to old man
Haskell, so she knows for sure it ain’t this fool’s car, and is convinced
before Al can spit out his gum that he’s done him in just get his hands on the
wad of cash the old geezer flashed in everyone’s face. His bad luck. That’s for
certain.

Vera is the kind a girl knows more tricks
than the years she’s been on the planet. Before they even get cross city line
into L.A. she’s got the guy tied to her like a ball to a chain; pretends to be
married and determines to sell the soupcan with her as its major benefactress.

Okay. Okay. Al’s ready to go along with
anything. Just as long as he can pick up on his sticks to play another day,
find his baby and make it all up. But Vera, she’s some smart cookie. Suddenly
she’s got another plot going on behind that half-pretty face. Before they can
even ditch the wheels she’s driving down to meet Haskell’s rich dead daddy
where’s Al’s supposed to playact his long lost son upon whom Pop’s ready and willing
to dump his will.

No, Al won’t go along with that. Enough is enough.
Whatcha gonna do though with Vera on a toot ready to call up the cops every
time he says “No way!”

What’s the choice? Locked up. That bitch
Vera taking the phone in the other room with her falling dead drunk under the
sheets, cord wrapped round her waist.

Seeing that cord as the only thing still
connecting her to him, Al thinks it wouldn’t hurt to pull on it just a little
bit, like a drowning man pulling at the strings of his fate. Like an umbilical
chord a newborn’s just gotta break if he’s going to take his good breath and
scream out, “I’m here”!

Who’d have guessed?

Nobody told him that she’d wrapped like a
noose round her neck.

No wonder he’s edgy. Sitting in a dingy diner
getting ready now to get nabbed by the cops. He’s gonna die, sure as supper,
for something he never did. Or at leastfor something he didn’t know he had done. That’s what they all say!

“Comeon coppers, come and get me,” he can’t
help himself crying out. But do they? Will they really? That’s a question to
which there is no answer. Maybe he isn’t where he thought he was. Or just maybe
he’s gone where he thought he isn’t. I mean, it’s all so simple. Yet it’s all
so dark and confusing, kinda like a mirror in which when you look into you
can’t get out. You have to laugh, it’s so bad. It’s so good it hurts.